Page 17

Chapter seventeen

“ H ow have I been the biggest idiot in the history of idiots?” Odelle asked, reaching up to grab her glass of wine from Nora’s coffee table. She had given up on furniture and taken to lying on the floor as she bemoaned her circumstances.

“That’s a little melodramatic,” Nora argued from where she lay on the floor next to her, reaching for another handful of popcorn. It was one of those kind of nights.

“Let’s look at the facts, though. Antony and I spent two whole months dancing around each other because we both thought the other had rejected us. I’m a reporter; doesn’t that mean I’m supposed to be a good communicator?” Odelle reasoned.

“Ok, so maybe you did have a dumb moment or twenty,” Nora conceded around a mouthful of popcorn. “You and Antony worked around it eventually.”

“But we lost a powerful artifact to the Shadow in the process, because we were too busy sticking our heads up our own asses.”

“That probably would have happened anyway,” Nora argued. “The Shadow was most likely controlling the crown before you even encountered it at that party.”

Odelle changed arguments, loose and warm from the wine. “Even so, think of all the awesome sex I missed out on! ”

Nora narrowly missed spraying wine on her carpet as she choked on her sip. “I’m sure you’ll make up for it. But really, I don’t need details,” Nora sputtered as she regained her breath.

“Fine,” Odelle conceded, “but it’s true. How could Antony, the member of an order of immortal sorcerers with the most power, get it into his ridiculous brain that he shouldn’t be with someone…just because he’s not a fighter?”

“Think about it; if I have emotional baggage and I’m barely over thirty, imagine how much baggage Antony must be carrying. It’s just something you need to work through. Adam and I did, and we still are working through some of it.”

Odelle rolled onto her stomach, resting her chin on her hands as she regarded her older sister. “But aren’t you and Adam a bit different? I mean, you’re his reincarnated wife that he’d scoured the earth for centuries to find. He knows you’re worth it, and you belong with the Eteria. You’re…special, zolotse .”

“Stop that!” Nora scolded. “You’re your own kind of special.”

“A special kind of weird maybe,” Odelle said, throwing a piece of popcorn at Nora.

“That’s for sure. And my case may have been different, but Adam and I still fell in love with who we are as people today. It wasn’t just a done deal when he found me. We still chose to be with each other.”

Nora’s words were as daunting as they were reassuring. Odelle nearly levitated with giddiness after her interlude with Antony, but his words still gnawed at her. After three thousand years of self-doubt, Odelle wasn’t going to be able to scrub it clean in one afternoon. She worried that she wouldn’t ever be able to fully erase the guilt that Antony carried.

“Antony was right about one thing,” Nora broke the silence of Odelle’s contemplation. “You do need protection. ”

“I already have an IUD,” Odelle pointed out, but Nora waved her away with an exasperated hand.

“Once again, not the thing I wanted to talk about.” Nora huffed. “I meant protection from the Shadow. It clearly isn’t happy with you.”

“Is the Shadow happy with anybody?” Odelle asked.

“Considering that it is built from fear and pain, I doubt it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s gunning for you.”

“Why though?” Odelle asked. “I’m not much of a threat to it.”

Nora cocked her head to the side. “It clearly doesn’t see it that way. You almost stole the crown out from under its nose. It clearly covets the crown if it was willing to reveal itself to keep you from taking it.”

“So it’s holding a grudge.”

“Probably not worse than being on the bad side of one of your grudges,” Nora teased.

If Odelle had less wine, she might have resisted the urge to stick her tongue out. Now though, she let her sister pull out her childishness.

“I don’t try to pull people to their death in icy rivers,” Odelle argued.

“True. Either way, you should have an Eteria member who can fight off the Shadow stick around you until the danger has passed,” Nora insisted. “I can hang around as much as I can, and so can Adam, but we should loop in some other members too. Maybe Thad…”

“And Seraphina,” Odelle piped up.

Nora made a face like somebody had just held a rotten fish under her nose.

“Look, I know you don’t like her, and you don’t have to, but she’s been nice to me.”

Nora’s look of distaste didn’t fade, but she conceded.

“Fine, if you don’t mind having her around, then she can join in the fun too. ”

Odelle nodded. “I think she’d like getting out into the world a bit more.”

Nora looked skeptical but pushed ahead. “Either way, we’ll keep an eye on you, and you keep listening for signs of the Shadow. The sooner we get the crown back, the better.”

Odelle couldn’t agree more. Retrieving the crown would go a long way towards loosening the knot of uneasiness and guilt that had taken up residence in the pit of her stomach.

The parade of guards from the Eteria turned out to be a welcome addition to what was quickly becoming the most boring work week of Odelle’s life. In a market like Chicago, the problem usually seemed to be figuring out which thefts, murders, and trials to report on. Now though, she and Paul were scrounging up special interest pieces to pad their run time. Last night, she had done a piece on a local dairy-free ice cream making competition. It was slim pickings.

Having Nora or Adam around to keep an eye on her seemed superfluous when the world was generally so peaceful. Still, the twinge of guilt in Odelle’s chest when she remembered tossing the crown to the Shadows kept her from being relieved that the Shadow hadn’t struck yet. The longer it bided its time, the longer it had to amass its forces.

Odelle could tell Antony felt the same. As much as they were enjoying their newfound intimacy, he asked if there had been any news of the Shadow first thing whenever she visited in the evening. They spent most of their time together at the Sanctuary, and while Odelle didn’t bring it up, she suspected it had to do with Antony wanting to keep her out of danger.

Still, Odelle wasn’t going to turn up her nose at spending more time at the Sanctuary with Antony as her guide. One evening, he led her through the halls, telling her stories of all the art adorning the walls; some of it made by Eteria members in the distant past while some had been collected by Adam throughout the years.

Odelle paused before an impressionist-style painting, resting her head on Antony’s shoulder as she admired the hazy pink and purple florals before her. He laced his fingers between hers in response, and she smiled at how easily casual intimacy was growing between them.

“Adam brought this one back to the Sanctuary when he was spending some time living in Australia. I think Adam thought he would enjoy nature and wildlife, but it turns out he enjoys nature only in an academic sense,” Antony explained.

Odelle huffed a breathy laugh, not having a hard time believing that of her sister’s boyfriend, who seemed to have invested considerable stock in the tweed blazer business.

“I didn’t know there was a large impressionist presence in Australia,” Odelle commented.

“This was done by a friend of his,” Antony said. “He didn’t become famous, and I don’t even think he painted for a living, but it’s still beautiful. In fact, I don’t think any of our paintings come from famous artists, but I still think we have a lovely collection.”

Odelle lifted her head to peer up and down the walls, and indeed the compilation of paintings would have made the Art Institute envious. Even then though, something about these works spoke to Odelle even more than those in museum galleries. Perhaps it was due to the stories of the people who made them, creating them for the sheer joy of expression and given to people they yearned to share their beauty with. It was a perfect echo of the way Antony spoke of the Light.

“I’m surprised none of these paintings are yours,” Odelle commented, thinking of Antony’s room strewn with endless works in progress, from jewelry to mechanical toys.

“To my great shame, painting was never something I mastered. I can sculpt and throw pottery passably, but drawing or anything of the sort doesn’t resonate for me. I have tried to pick it up dozens of times over the centuries, thinking it will be different, but I guess it never is,” Antony admitted.

“Well, I suppose you couldn’t go around being good at everything ,” Odelle teased. His responding smile made her heart do some interesting gymnastics in her ribcage. As she tugged him along to the next painting, a portrait, his pleased expression faded.

She glanced between Antony and the face in the painting, a severe woman in white, hair pulled so tight her scalp must surely ache. Even in a picture, the woman exuded power and authority. Still, the tiny crinkle at the corner of her eyes spoke of a kindness under the stern exterior.

“Who is she?” Odelle asked, voice quiet to reflect the sense of reverie in the air.

“She was our Commander. She led the Eteria for hundreds of years before the Defeat and is the reason most of us are here,” Antony explained, not taking his eyes off the portrait before him.

“She sounds like a force to be reckoned with.”

A smile pulled at Antony’s lips, even as the sorrow in his eyes deepened. “She was everything the Eteria needed in a leader. Fearless in a fight and compassionate off the battlefield. Sometimes I think—” Antony swallowed thickly. “If she had survived, then she would have been able to regain the Light for us. She would have led us back to our former glory, instead of us being a ragtag group, haunted by grief.”

“Did she die in the Defeat?”

“She died on the battlefield to save me.” Antony’s shoulders slumped at the admission. “She dove in front of a Shadow while beseeching me to use my powers to save the Eteria. The only sorcerer with more capacity for Light than me, one who everybody looked up to, died because of me, and all I could do was lead us in a retreat.”

His voice broke, along with Odelle’s heart at the grief he carried. Guilt was a burden that only grew heavier with time, and after millennia, the weight of it on Antony’s conscience was palpable.

“Do you know how I lost my legs?” Odelle asked abruptly. That drew Antony’s gaze away from the Commander’s image as he glanced at her with furrowed brows.

“No?”

“I don’t talk about it much, and people assume it’s because it hurts to think about, but that’s not the truth,” Odelle said pensively. “I never bring it up because I don’t want people to see me as a victim—not when I have lived an incredibly fortunate life, all things considered. Just like I don’t like to mention I was once a foster child, as it seems wrong to have people pity me when Nora and I were adopted by the most loving woman to walk the face of the earth. The truth is though, that I don’t think about losing my legs often… I don’t even remember it. Irina, though—I know she thinks about it all the time.

“When I was almost two, I tried to climb a bookcase, but it fell over and crushed me. My lower legs were beyond repair and had to be amputated. I can’t imagine how Irina must have felt. She still uses double the amount of drywall anchors to attach her furniture to the wall, even though she hasn’t had children living at home for years. Hell, even Nora sometimes says that she should have stopped me, even though she was only four at the time.

“And yes—my residual limbs ache when the weather changes and I get blisters if my socks bunch up. But what hurts even more? Knowing how much pain the people I love carry in their hearts for something I don’t even blame them for. This is just part of who I am, and I would pick my family over having my legs back a million times over.”

Odelle looked back at the Commander, noting the warmth in her gaze despite the firm set of her mouth. “I think, if she were here, she might feel similarly. If she sacrificed herself to save you, she cared about you enough to not want you to live with this sort of pain. She saw something worth preserving in you, and the best way to honor that is by celebrating what you are.”

Odelle’s gaze was jerked away from the portrait when Antony crushed her against his chest. She let her own arms snake around his waist as his breath tickled the crown of her head.

“Isn’t age supposed to make me the wise one?” he murmured into her hair.

“Maybe there is something to be said for a fresh perspective.” Her voice came out muffled from her face being smashed against Antony’s chest, but she didn’t feel inclined to pull away. After all, she was coming to see him as one of the Eteria’s brightest souls, persisting through their darkest hour to carry the Light forward, even when he didn’t always feel it with him.

It came as a surprise when Antony showed up at the office one afternoon. Odelle had spotted Thad hiding behind a newspaper in the café downstairs during lunch and assumed he was her security detail for the day.

As Odelle was shoving her papers into her briefcase, ready to head out for the day, a throat cleared behind her. She turned, ready to ward off Ernie badgering her about the talk show again, only to gasp in delight.

“Antony!” Odelle practically leaped at him, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing a kiss to his cheek. She pulled back to find him blushing, and her heart fluttered. Despite being used to public bathhouses, he seemed shy about public displays of affection. She pulled him closer and chanced a nibble at his ear just to hear his breath stutter.

“Someone’s happy to see me,” Antony commented, his voice coming out low and rough.

It was now her mission to make him sound like that as often as possible.

Odelle was about to tell him exactly how happy she was to see him when a shrill voice interrupted her.

“What do you mean there’s something wrong with the feed?” Mallorie demanded, pushing out of the studio door and into the office space. She still had her battery pack and microphone attached, something most broadcasters knew better than to do in the office area, but Mallorie didn’t seem to care.

Odelle frowned. Mallorie should have been on the air right now.

“We’re unable to broadcast,” A man said, sticking his head out of the technical room, “I don’t know what happened. Our signal just…died.”

Phones began to ring around the office.

“Channel four is down too—”

“And channel seven!” Somebody else chimed in .

“That’s all the local news channels,” Odelle murmured, looking around at the erupting chaos.

“Just got a message,” shouted the man from the tech room. “Some sort of weather phenomenon is disrupting all signals that are routed through the antennas on the Sears Tower.”

“What kind of weather would block a television signal?” Antony leaned in to ask Odelle.

“Lightening.” Odelle shrugged. “Maybe extreme wind.”

“Anything else?” Antony asked.

Odelle opened her mouth to explain that she just made the broadcast, she didn’t really know how it was transmitted, when she saw what Antony was getting at. Late afternoon sun shone clearly through the windows at the far end of the room.

Grabbing a remote, Odelle pointed it at the monitor on the wall, which normally displayed the feed of their channel but now just transmitting static. She flipped through channels, trying to find a national news station that would be broadcast via satellite. Channel nine was filmed locally but aired nationally. It might still be up and running.

“All Chicago area news and radio stations have lost signals,” Amy Biderman’s iconic voice announced as soon as Odelle found channel nine. “Initial reports are saying this could be a cyber-attack, and some are even claiming this might be terrorist activity.”

Odelle nearly screamed in frustration. Biderman knew better than to report such conjecture at a time like this.

“She’s going to cause a panic!” She jabbed her finger at the monitor as if she could compel Amy Biderman to stop talking.

Antony’s eyes had gone wide.

“People will be afraid; it will be chaos,” he murmured .

“Yeah that’s—oh.” What Antony was getting at dawned on her. “You think the Shadow did this?”

Before Antony could respond, Thad materialized at his side.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got trouble,” he remarked. “People are already starting to panic. The Shadow might use this as an opportunity to strike. Attack while people are confused and cut off from reliable information.”

“We need to get the signal back up,” Odelle insisted.

“The man said there was a problem with the antennas on top of some tower. Do you know where that is?” Antony asked.

“It’s hard to miss the Sears Tower,” Odelle pointed out.

“Then we should go there.” Antony’s jaw was set. “I can try to fix whatever is wrong with them.”

Odelle gaped at him.

“I know you’re good,” she said. “but these antennas are not the little things on top of radios. They’re the size of buildings themselves. Besides, I’m sure they already have technicians on it.”

“If it is the Shadow that tampered with them, normal technicians won’t be able to fix it,” Thad pointed out.

Odelle tugged at a loose strand of hair. It would be no mean feat getting Antony onto the roof of the tallest building in the city, but they had come this far. Besides, if this really was the Shadow’s plan…

“Ok,” she said with a sharp nod, “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” Thad stopped them. “I’m going to get everybody else. Try to calm down people on the streets and watch for any attacks.”

“But—” Antony wavered, looking back and forth between Odelle and Thad.

“He’s needed elsewhere,” Odelle insisted. “Besides, it looks like the Shadow is going for the entire city, not targeting me. ”

Antony tugged nervously at the neck of his sweater but conceded. The trio made their way out of the building, unnoticed in the hubbub of the chaotic office. All Odelle’s coworkers were too busy trying to put out virtual fires to pay their exit any mind. As soon as they emerged onto the street, Thad loped off in the direction of the park to rally the troops.

Odelle glanced up and down the street, considering how to travel the mile or so to the Sears Tower. Any hope of catching a taxi or a bus was dashed. Cars jammed the street, and not just the normal city traffic. People hung out of open windows, yelling words Odelle could hardly hear over the symphony of horns and sirens. Not even ten minutes after the signals went down, the streets were nearly apocalyptic.

“It’ll take us about fifteen minutes if we walk fast.” Odelle almost had to shout to be sure Antony could hear her over the din. “But I’m not sure I can run in these.”

She looked down in frustration at her legs, wishing she was wearing her running blades. All that training for the half marathon and she wasn’t even going to be able to run when the safety of the city was at stake.

“How about that?” Antony pointed.

Odelle followed his line of sight to find a police horse tied to a lamppost. The accompanying officer stood on the sidewalk nearby trying to calm a hysterical woman with an equally hysterical child on her hip. He was having little success.

“A horse?” Odelle asked incredulously, eyeing the animal dubiously as it stamped at the ground and whickered, clearly affected by the press of people despite its training.

“Advantages of having lived in a time before cars,” Antony said taking Odelle’s hand and pulling her towards the officer .

“I thought Nora said the Eteria didn’t use cavalry—that the magic scared the horses,” Odelle protested, not entirely sure she wanted to add grand theft equestrian to her list of recent crimes.

“Doesn’t mean we didn’t use them for transportation. Besides, I have a way with animals,” Antony reassured.

“But I don’t even know how to get on the horse,” Odelle resisted, now only a few feet away. Somehow, she didn’t think this type of horseback riding would be anything like the docile pony rides of long-ago summer camps.

They edged up next to the massive animal, and despite Odelle’s stature, she instantly felt small. Nothing like two thousand pounds of twitching muscle and a single dark eye staring at her to make her realize the fragility of her bones.

Antony began murmuring something in Greek and the horse seemed to settle, although it still eyed Odelle suspiciously. She was reticent to take her eyes off the animal in case it decided to take a bite out of her, but she chanced a glance at the police officer as Antony unwound the reigns from the streetlight. Thankfully, he had his hands full with the mother, who was now grabbing him by his jacket as she sobbed.

Antony turned and offered the reigns to Odelle, who stared at him incredulously.

“I’ll help you up first, and then jump up after you,” he explained as Odelle gingerly plucked the reins from his hands.

“Are you sure? I don’t think he likes me very much,” Odelle pointed out.

Indeed, as soon as Odelle took the reins, the animal snorted and stamped the pavement again .

“It’ll be fine,” Antony assured. Before Odelle had a chance to think better of it, he grabbed her by the waist and launched her up into the saddle with a strength she hadn’t known he possessed.

Odelle flopped across the horse’s back in her best impression of a beached whale, the pommel catching her in the stomach and knocking the wind from her lungs. She struggled to swing one leg over, cursing as her tight dress rode up practically to her waist. Pencil skirts were not designed for horseback adventures, but like Hell she was going for this ride side saddle. She was stealing a police horse. What more harm would it do if the city saw her underwear in the process?

The horse seemed to have protests of its own, letting out a high nicker and pulling its ears flat against its head as Odelle squirmed on its back. The police officer’s head snapped up at the noise, but it was too late. Antony swung himself into the saddle behind Odelle in a much more elegant fashion and kicked the animal into motion. Despite its clear dislike of Odelle, the horse responded to Antony’s direction, taking off down the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians like bowling pins in its path.

“Sorry!” Antony shouted at the police officer as they cantered past, an impeccably polite thief.

Odelle would have tumbled off if not for Antony’s arms tight around her waist and the way her pelvis wedged against his in a saddle clearly meant for one person. Somehow, fragrance commercials always made horseback rides seem romantic, but Odelle’s experience was turning out to be more hectic than anything else. Maybe it had something to do with commercials showing slow motion gallops on the beach. Currently, Antony maneuvered the horse between stopped cars at a lurching trot, shouting directly in Odelle’s ear for pedestrians to get out of the way. Cars horns drowned out the sharp clop of hooves as they wove in and out of gridlocked traffic, jumping up onto the sidewalk in places where the street was too densely packed.

Odelle bounced in the saddle as elegantly as a sack of potatoes, bare thighs already chaffing against the rough leather and the wind sticking her hair to her lip gloss. She did her best to direct Antony towards their destination with a combination of yelling and pointing, whenever she could persuade herself to release her death grip on the pommel. As her hands slipped, she focused on resisting the urge to abandon the slick leather for a more secure grip on the horse’s mane. It already seemed to barely tolerate her; no need to antagonize the animal by ripping out chunks of hair.

Antony, on the other hand, clearly wasn’t lying about having done this before, urging the horse to jump over a traffic barrier and clutching Odelle to his chest as it complied, like he was a stuntman in an action film. She wished she could watch Antony playing the part of dramatic equestrian hero from the ground at a time when the safety of the city wasn’t hanging in the balance.

It wasn’t long before Antony pulled them to a halt at the base of the Sears Tower. They arrived much faster than they would have on foot, especially with the current pandemonium, although it had come at the cost of Odelle’s dignity. He dismounted and held out his arms. Odelle slithered down after him, lucky he was there to catch her, or she might have ended up on her ass.

As she yanked her dress back down over the top of her thighs, the horse affectionately head-butted Antony in the shoulder. He patted the majestic beast on the nose and murmured once more in Greek, clearly having bonded with the animal in the last five minutes. Still, when Odelle grabbed his arm to haul him into the building, the horse snorted at her unhappily, clearly not extending whatever good will it had for Antony .

The couple tumbled through the revolving doors into a lobby only marginally less chaotic than the street outside. Men in florescent orange vests milled about, arguing with each other.

“The readings are coming back normal. The problem isn’t on our end!”

“Every single signal that’s routed through those antennas is down. Explain that without something being wrong with them.”

“My boys have checked them out and insist they don’t see anything wrong.”

“So it is a cyber-attack!”

Odelle spotted the elevators at the far end of the lobby. The line of tourists normally congregated to visit the top floor was notably absent, most likely scattered by the horde of maintenance workers. A teenager in a blue vest still sat at the ticket booth but had turned around in his chair to watch the arguing workers.

“Just walk like you belong here,” Odelle instructed Antony, lifting her chin and striding across the lobby. They managed to weave their way across the room unhindered, probably thanks to what Nora would call Odelle’s “reporter energy.” The lobby was crowded enough that Odelle had to squeeze through a dense knot of workers, hand brushing over the back of one’s vest as she passed.

“Excuse me,” she said with a polite smile. The maintenance worker spared her only a quick glance and a nod before turning back to his heated debate, just as Odelle had hoped.

Thankfully, an elevator door slid open as soon as Odelle pressed the call button. At the polite ding, the teenager at the ticket counter turned around, but Odelle tugged Antony into the elevator .

“Hey!” he yelled, but Odelle was already mashing the door close button and the button for the top floor. They would have to gain access to the roof from there, but Odelle had a plan for that.

As the elevator lurched upwards, Antony grabbed Odelle’s shoulder unsteadily.

“Chicago elevators go fast,” she sympathized, even as her own ears began to pop.

“It’s not just that.” Antony looked around him dubiously. “I’m not sure putting ourselves into a metal box hurtling into the sky is a good idea when the Shadow is after us.”

“Climbing a hundred flights of stairs would take way too long,” Odelle reasoned, even as she realized that Antony had a point. “Besides, the Shadow is probably having too much fun exploiting chaos and disrupting news signals to tamper with the elevators.”

She nearly toppled over as the elevator jerked to a sudden stop and the light flickered out, plunging them into pitch blackness.

“You were saying?” came Antony’s voice from the darkness.

Odelle fished her phone out of her pocket, swiping at the screen and turning on her flashlight. She shined it around Antony, the light casting long shadows on his face, making his high cheekbones look even sharper than usual.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Normally, you press the panic button and wait for the firemen, but I doubt we have time for that,” Odelle observed.

Antony shook his head.

“Let’s see if I can get this thing going again,” he said, already moving towards the button panel. “Hold the light up so I can see.”

Odelle did as he requested but asked, “How does being a magical blacksmith qualify you to fix electronics again? ”

“Magical objects are made of energy, and electricity is just another sort of energy,” Antony reminded her as he examined the panel. “Sometimes, you’ve just got to talk nice to an object’s energy, and it will cooperate with you.”

“So you seduce machines into doing your bidding,” Odelle said drily as she watched a tiny glowing screwdriver grow out of Antony’s finger. She squinted at him, trying to see any signs of overexertion, but this use of the Light didn’t seem to faze him.

“I wouldn’t put it like that exactly—” Antony broke from his work unscrewing the panel as an echoing clang sounded above the ceiling of the elevator. They both looked up at the source of the sound.

“Maybe it’s somebody coming to rescue us?” Odelle speculated hopefully.

“I doubt it. We’re sitting ducks here.” Antony glanced around, seemingly abandoning the plan of jumpstarting the elevator. “We have to get out of here.”

Another clang echoed through the elevator, and the box shuddered around them. Odelle couldn’t agree more with the statement.

“Help me pry the doors open,” she instructed.

Odelle jammed her fingers into the gap between the doors, feeling several nails break in the process. As soon as she had managed to create a small gap between the doors, Antony joined her, each sliding a door in the opposite direction. They opened a gap a few inches wide before it became clear that this was a futile exercise. The elevator was completely between floors, only the very bottom of the outside door visible at the top. Even somebody as slight as Antony wouldn’t be able to climb through the gap.

“I guess it’s the escape hatch on the ceiling,” Odelle observed, even as her heart rate began to climb. A dark elevator shaft was not a place she wanted to spend time while being tracked by the Shadow, but their choices were quickly dwindling.

Antony kneeled down. “Get on my shoulders and I’ll lift you up so you can get it open.”

Odelle did as he bid, although not without accidentally shoving his entire head up her skirt in the process. After this was over, she was investing in pants for work, no matter how inconvenient it was for taking her legs off and on. Once she was seated on his shoulders, Antony stood, forcing her to clutch at the walls as she wobbled. Still, his height was sufficient to give her easy access to the hatch in the ceiling. She quickly followed the instructions on the red emergency sticker, turning a lever and pushing the flap up. Another lurch in the elevator caused her hands to shake as she worked. Finally, she was able to pull herself through the hatch onto the roof of the elevator, aided by Antony’s hands on her waist.

As Antony climbed after her, she shined her phone flashlight up into the cavernous dark, and her heart froze. Cables as thick as her thigh ran from the ceiling of the elevator and up into the shaft past where the weak beam of her flashlight could illuminate. Crawling on the cables several stories above them were twisted Shadows, hard to differentiate from the blackness of the elevator shaft, but distinguishable by their unnatural churning motions.

“Antony,” Odelle voiced in panic as she realized what the creatures were doing. A horrible metallic scraping preceded another echoing clang as the elevator shuddered again, and another fiber of the cable suspending the elevator was severed.

“Ares’s asshole,” Antony cursed, looking around. He seemed to spot what he was looking for among the cables on the walls of the elevator shaft. He stepped toward them, and Odelle saw some sparks fly in the darkness as he grabbed at them.

A high squeak escaped Odelle as the elevator dropped a few inches, not even able to draw enough breath to scream. Antony reached out and yanked Odelle towards the wall where he stood. She realized they could just squeeze onto a beam, not even a foot wide, running along the wall. She craned her neck to keep her eyes on the Shadows above, finding that some were beginning to slink down the cables towards them. Antony held a severed wire in one hand and pressed her flat against the wall with his other arm.

“Press your head back and don’t move,” he instructed as the top of the elevator right in front of her toes dropped another few inches.

Odelle couldn’t find her voice to ask why but did as she was told. As she did, she saw glowing Light out of the corner of her eyes. Antony glowed brightly for a moment. Then there was an electric sizzle and a whoosh as the elevator at her feet shot upwards, rushing by inches from her nose. The breeze from its acceleration rustled her hair, and she squeezed her eyes shut. From above came horrific screeches as the Shadows were taken for a ride. There was a clang and the shrieking suddenly cut off.

Only their panting filled the elevator shaft now, although Odelle could feel her heartbeat pulsing in her ears. After a few moments, she pried her eyes open only to immediately snap them shut again. Just an inch in front of her toes, the beam she stood on ended, giving way to a dark abyss that might have been the opening to Tartarus itself.

“Hey, it’s ok, we’re all right,” Antony said next to her, although the reassuring nature of his statement was undercut by the breathlessness of his voice .

“Right behind us is an exit door,” Antony continued. Sure enough, Odelle could feel the vertical crack under her fingers where she attempted to grip onto the wall behind her. The elevator must have dropped enough while they were climbing on top to get them even with the floor.

“I think I can get it open using one of these wires over here,” Antony continued.

He removed the arm across Odelle’s torso that had been pressing her back against the wall, and she almost whimpered at the loss of security that came with it. Instead, she bit her lip and nodded, even though he likely couldn’t see her.

There was a rustling of movement and another, smaller flash of Light. For one horrible moment, Odelle thought she was going to fall as the door behind her started to slide. Then she stepped backward through it, nearly avoiding tipping over. She finally filled her aching lungs, having been holding her breath almost since she exited the elevator.

Antony stepped back with her into a bland office hallway. Dull commercial multicolor carpet and humming florescent lights jarred their senses, completely at odds with the shadowy tunnel where they had nearly met their death. The predictable monotony of a corporate workplace had a strangely calming effect on Odelle, as if the nightmare of a few seconds earlier had to have been a dream she’d had after falling asleep at her desk. As she gained her bearings, a plaque next to the elevator caught her eye.

“We’re on the 97 th floor. We can climb to the top from here,” she explained, already looking for the stairwell.

They found it around the corner and pushed in, dashing up the stairs as fast as they could. It turned out all the half-marathon training Odelle had done wasn’t in vain after all. Still, they both paused at the landing of the one hundred and eighth floor, hands on their knees as they caught their breath. Her heart rate hadn’t returned to normal from their encounter in the elevator before they started climbing, and now it made its displeasure known by trying to escape from her ribcage.

Once their breathing had leveled out to heavy panting, Antony tried the door and looked like he was going to bang his head against in frustration when it was locked.

“They don’t give roof access to just anybody, that would be a safety nightmare,” Odelle pointed out.

Antony looked dubiously at the ID scan pad next to the door.

“How many doors am I going to have to fry just to get on a roof?” he asked in exasperation.

“No need. I’m not ‘just anybody.’” Odelle brandished the ID card she had grabbed off the maintenance man in the lobby under Antony’s nose victoriously.

“Good to know you don’t actually grope random maintenance workers without good reason,” Antony commented, as Odelle reached past him to scan the ID.

Her hand hovered above the scan pad for a moment as she met Antony’s eyes. They both seemed to ask the other if they were ready without words. After a jerky dip of Antony’s chin, Odelle tapped the card on the pad with a faint beep , and they pushed out onto the roof.

Immediately, the wind buffeted them, the normal Chicago lake breeze amplified to gale force at this height. Both instinctively bent over in response, bracing themselves as they took in their surroundings. No Shadows were visible, but Odelle’s gaze roved continuously across the rooftop as they crept towards the antenna.

Odelle had known they had to be larger than they appeared from the ground, but she still hadn’t been prepared for the white monoliths before her. They made the towering stone columns at the Sanctuary look like toothpicks. Antony reached out and pressed his palms to the nearest one, scrunching his eyes closed as if listening carefully. Odelle wrapped her arms around her torso to shield herself from the cold and continued to scan the area as he worked. She had been colder these past two weeks than she had in the whole two winters before this.

“The Shadow has jammed up the energy pathways,” Antony shouted to be heard over the wind “I should be able to flush it out with the Light, but I’ll have to go slowly to not accidentally knock myself out.”

“I’ll keep a lookout,” Odelle promised with a nod.

Antony shut his eyes again, and gold glimmered where his palms met the antenna. Odelle tore her eyes away to make good on her end of the promise. She stood for long minutes, teeth chattering, tensed against both the cold and the threat of the Shadows. Maybe all the creatures had been killed in Antony’s stunt with the elevator, but it seemed unlikely. Still, the rooftop remained empty. Odelle snuck periodic glances at Antony out of the corner of her eye, making sure he didn’t overexert himself. He simply stood as if frozen, eyes closed and gently pulsing with incandescent Light.

Odelle had just torn her eyes away from the way the Light accentuated the hollow of his throat when movement caught her eyes. She whipped her head towards where she thought she had seen the Shadow, only to catch it out of the corner of her eye once more. Then, it showed itself, slinking around the base of the far antenna, gliding sickeningly across the rooftop like an oil spill across water.

She glanced back and forth between Antony and the approaching Shadow, but he didn’t seem to have sensed it.

“Antony, we’ve got a problem,” she shouted, but he didn’t move a muscle .

She tapped his shoulder and then shook him, but whatever trance he had entered to fix the antenna was strong. Still, the Shadow closed the distance between them heading straight toward Antony, unholy fire glimmering in the caverns that served as eyes.

“Hey, over here,” Odelle shouted, waving her arms in the air like an over-caffeinated air traffic controller before she could process what she was doing. Better to have the Shadow focus on her, considering she could at least attempt to fight back.

The Shadow turned its horrifying gaze on her, and she immediately regretted her decision. Still, she was in it now.

“You didn’t kill me before, what makes you think you can finish the job now?” Odelle taunted, surreptitiously patting her pockets for anything she could use as a weapon, only to come up dismally blank. She didn’t even have her keys on her.

The Shadow drifted towards her, and Odelle backed up, leading the Shadow away from Antony. Her back was to the edge of the roof, and a one hundred story drop would greet her if she fell. She raised her chin defiantly and took another step.

“What, are you scared to attack me? I don’t even have a weapon!” Odelle raised her empty hands as proof. She sensed more than saw that the edge was mere feet behind her.

A rip formed in the Shadow’s head, revealing more white fire inside the demented imitation of a smile. For one moment, Odelle thought the Shadow might not fall for it. Then, it leaped.

As the Shadow jumped toward Odelle, she threw herself to the side, covering her head with her arms. The creature soared overhead, unable to control its momentum. It scrabbled and slid towards the edge of the roof, but it was too late. The bulk of its body toppled over the edge. A metallic screeching noise cut over the wind and set her teeth on edge as taloned fingers dug into the roof, arresting the Shadow’s momentum and leaving it dangling from the edge.

Odelle took two steps towards it, then stopped, overcome by a horrifying vision of the other arm snaking over the edge and yanking her into the abyss. Then the Shadow started to haul itself up, and she snapped into motion again. She dashed to the edge of the roof and stomped on the deformed hand that prevented the creature from falling to its doom. An earsplitting shriek tore from its deformed mouth, but it didn’t let go. She stomped on its fingers again and again, smelling burning rubber as the heat from its fiery flesh melted the soles of her shoes. With one more stomp so hard that it rattled her skull and drove her calf painfully into the socket of her prosthetic, the Shadow lost its grip.

Odelle stared over the edge, transfixed as it tumbled towards the earth, no longer able to hear its screaming by the time it hit the pavement. She wanted to step back, but she couldn’t. Not now that she’d looked over the edge and saw how far down the sidewalk really was. Not until Antony’s voice came from behind her.

“Odelle!”

She carefully turned, finding his eyes open but his hands still pressed to the antenna. She moved to join him, scanning the rooftop for any more unwelcome visitors and finding none.

“I’ve dispelled most of the Shadow, but I’m going to have to send a pulse of Light through to clean out the residual,” Antony explained as she approached. “It should send out a broadcast signal to all wavelengths when I do it—that is if I’m actually understanding how radio and television work. Is there a message you think I should transmit?”

“Oh—um…sure,” Odelle said

Antony closed his eyes again and nodded. “Just say it to me and I’ll transmit it exactly as I hear it. ”

Odelle shook herself and pulled her shoulders back. Standing tall always made her sound confident, and that’s what the city needed right now. Confident and calm and reassuring. She pulled out her grave but positive reporter voice and tried not to think about the fact that her largest audience to date was going to hear her speaking from a rooftop while her heart still hammered from fighting for her life against a creature of darkness.

“Hello Chicagoland, this is Odelle Zvezda from channel three news. We would like to apologize for the interruption of your service and inform you that it was due to a technical issue with transmission. We would like to thank you for staying calm during this uncertain period and keeping each other safe. Service on all channels should resume as usual. Thanks for watching your local news.”

The matter of the fact was, Odelle knew that the public had not remained calm during this period of uncertainty. Still, if she had learned one thing during her years as a reporter, expecting the best from people brought out the best in them.

As Odelle fell silent, Antony nodded again. Then, the Light under his palm intensified before shooting up the antenna and scattering into the sky. She watched golden particles dissolve into the sky, now pink and purple from the impending sunset.

Antony sagged, finally dropping his hands and staggering back a few steps. Odelle immediately ducked under his arm, ready to support him, but he held his weight. Instead, he turned to her and grinned, the light from the setting sun caressing his features, making it seem like he still shone with magic.

“We did it.” He sighed. “That went surprisingly well.”

Odelle couldn’t help but grin back at the look of pleased disbelief painting Antony’s features. Like he wasn’t the most powerful living sorcerer in the world. As if he were surprised that he could accomplish something incredible. She bumped her hip against his playfully.

“We make a good team,” she agreed. “You do incredible feats of magic while I throw any Shadows who try to stop you off skyscrapers.”

Antony’s face passed through a series of emotions in quick succession—confusion, disbelief, horror—then settled on concerned.

“You threw a Shadow off the roof?”

“Well, it threw itself technically, I just helped it along. Not to worry though, I’m still in one piece.” Odelle went to take a step forward and then stumbled. Looking down at her foot, she found that not just her shoe had been melted, but her foot was warped and twisted from the heat as well.

“Ok, mostly in one piece,” Odelle conceded. “My insurance is going to start asking some questions if I keep breaking prosthetics this fast.”

“You’re not going to keep breaking them this fast,” Antony declared. “I am going to make sure you don’t have to keep using your body parts as makeshift weapons anymore. I’m going to make you a weapon.”

“See, you can protect me after all.”

Antony looked dubious, but Odelle was having none of it. She pulled him to her and kissed any arguments right off his lips. Her skin still fizzled from the dissipating adrenaline, making her feel drunk and bold. As Odelle tried to push even closer to Antony, he chuckled into her mouth, gently extricating himself from her.

“While I appreciate, and even reciprocate your enthusiasm, I’m not sure this is the time or the place,” Antony pointed out. The tips of his ears were crimson where they peaked out of his hair.

Odelle was forced to agree. They were trespassing, and the sooner they made themselves scarce, the better .

The elevator ride down was much less eventful, but neither of them spoke, ears pricked for any sounds of another sabotage attempt. There was only the gentle humming of florescent lights and a properly functioning pully system. When they reached the lobby, maintenance men still argued with each other in tight knit groups. From the snippets Odelle caught as she and Antony casually picked their way towards the door, they now argued about who was responsible for the signal being restored.

“Clearly, I was the one to fix it, because I was the last one up there.”

“Yeah, and you said it wasn’t even broken.”

Odelle snorted as they pushed through the revolving door and onto the sidewalk. Their equine friend hadn’t waited for them or had been recovered by the police officer. The street had already calmed towards its usual level of disorder. Voices still yelled and car horns still expressed their displeasure, but the frantic nature of the cacophony had dissolved. Odelle was surprised their broadcast had pacified the people so fast, but the chaos seemed to dissipate as quickly as it had formed.